Saxons for everyone!

18 March 2015 09:00

Today is an election day in the Netherlands, where we get to choose the members of the States-Provincial, which is, simply put, our provincial parliament. They don’t really have that much power compared to, say, a state legislature in the United States, but they still get to make quite a few important decisions.

In addition to this, the members of the States-Provincial get to choose the members of the Eerste Kamer, our Senate, which means that a lot of national politicians tend to get involved in the debates and such, and that the media won’t shut up about it.

It also means getting ambushed by campaigners whenever you try to get into or out of a train station. Seeing as I go to my day job by train, this is somewhat annoying the first day it happens. After a week, it’ll drive you nuts.

Now, under normal circumstances this would of course never happen, but I wouldn’t be a fantasy author if I couldn’t figure out at least a story premise where this would make some kind of twisted sense.

So what sort of weirdness would have to happen for an actual Saxon Shield Wall to show up in the Dutch parliament? Not a group of cosplayers, and not a group of reenacters, but actual (Anglo-)Saxons armed to the teeth? We’d have to be talking about a pretty massive time disturbance.

But that, of course, wouldn’t be limited to just a group of 11th-century warriors showing up. We’d have people from all over history popping up all over the place. Mongol hordes in the streets of LA, Crusaders in the Australian Outback, Roman legions camping within sight of Mount McKinley and maybe even an SS battalion teleported to the moon.

All of which, really, is just a variation on The Wedding of River Song, the series 6 finale for the 2005 series of Doctor Who.